This invention relates to a response system which obtains the individual response of audience members to questions put to them and, in particular, to an interactive response system for retrieving at a central location responses from a plurality of users located at at least one geographically separated site and providing interaction between an instructor at the central location and the users. The invention finds application as an educational aid for determining the comprehension levels of pupils in a class and as a commercial tool for conducting audience preference polls and the like.
Interactive response systems which retrieve at a central location responses from a plurality of users located at geographically separated sites and which provide further action between an instructor at the central location and the users have long been known. Such systems are also referred to as distance-learning systems. In one such system, each remote site includes a plurality of keypads on a daisy chain cable. Each of the keypads includes a microphone. A student wishing to speak to the instructor at the remote site presses a button on the keypad. A host computer at the host site displays a queue of call/request messages including the identity and total number of callers. Certain individuals are provided a priority status which is displayed when those individuals request a call. When the instructor wishes to accept a call from a particular individual, the host computer sends an enabling signal which connects the microphone of the corresponding keypad unit back to the instructor via a voice communication channel.
Such hard-wired distance-learning systems are exceptionally cumbersome to use because the routing of cables between a base unit at each remote site and the plurality of response units makes all but permanent installations difficult to establish. Furthermore, the providing of priority status to particular individuals, which status is communicated to the instructor when the individual requests a call, is not of much assistance to the instructor. While the instructor may wish to call upon individuals having priority status under certain circumstances, the circumstances may change dependent upon the nature of the question and the like. Such rigid designation of priority status does not provide the instructor with the opportunity to take calls from individuals having characteristics which the instructor knows to be of particular relevance to a particular question or topic.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,093,786 entitled REMOTE RESPONSE SYSTEM, Harry G. Derks, one of the present inventors, discloses a wireless response system which provides the ability to rapidly and reliably retrieve a response from a plurality of response units at a base unit utilizing a wireless communication link. The Derks system eliminated the difficulties associated with cabling between each of the response units and the base unit and allowed a truly portable system which could be fit within a suitcase, or the like, and be set up in any location, including hotel rooms, classrooms, conference rooms, and the like. Because the Derks system was contemplated primarily for use at a single location at a time, interaction between the instructor and each of the users was on the basis of face-to-face discussion.